We’re brought up in a country where we’re lucky to be able to say that school is a ‘given.’
So much so as a society we just assume that babies go nursery, then tots go to pre-school and kids are packed off to school. And finally as adults we work in offices following a 9-5 working week.
But what if there is another way? A more individually sculpted way of growing and learning?
That’s why my partner Chris and I started toying with the idea of home education or home schooling.
Chris had a very positive school experience as a child whereas mine was largely negative.
So as you can imagine it was me who first suggested home educating our eldest daughter Jasmine, aged 3.
I loved the idea of Jasmine exploring, playing sports, learning languages, dancing and doing anything she loves so that she loves learning (I’ve managed to justify shoe shopping as we calculate the number of pairs of shoes!).
But on a more serious note I couldn’t bear the thought of Jasmine being forced through examination after examination regardless of her personal skills.
And to my surprise Chris agreed. He was open to the idea of teaching Jasmine ourselves for a few years.
So it all became very real very quick.
Panic struck us. Were we really going to embark on educating our children ourselves?!
But after a lot of discussion and debate on how it will work… We decided that we will start home educating from January 2016 (NOW!) as well as applying for a school place and see where we end up come Summer 2016.
For us the whole point of Home Edding is that we choose the best style of learning that suits Jasmine, it’s not us just trying to be different.
So it may turn out that after six months of Home Ed, she ends up going to school.
There’s no harm in us all actively learning together.
We’ll be blogging about our Home Ed journey here…. so feel free to ask questions and join in the discussion. And yes we will touch on SOCIALISATION and ROUTINE etc etc (just because that’s what we’re always quizzed about when we utter the words “We’re thinking of Home Edding…”)
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Surely before the legal age your child should be in school (the term after their 5th birthday) you are parenting rather than home educating a school age child? I’m not sure calling it home educating is valid. I do hope this isn’t another ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ to get readers if you actually put your child in school?
Thanks for your comment. We are just trialing it at the moment until Summer when she is due to start school in September. We will decide in Summer what works best for our child.